Monthly Archives: June 2012

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Last week we reported on the company where 4 out of 7 executive directors were carrying the Olympic torch.

As part of our process of investigating the allocation of torchbearer places, we’re publishing the data behind that investigation.

This is most likely not an exhaustive list – if you know how many places the company was allocated, please let us know. You can also find a list of employees who have made an impression on the company in their 2011 annual report (PDF), which may contain others.

UPDATE: We have had a tip off that the ‘torch kiss’ between Tom Sreeves and Simon Lyonson Day 26 represented another two Aggreko directors: a Tom Sreeves is also Director of Manufacturing for the company and lives in the same area (his story has since disappeared from the official torchbearer site but is still cached).

If Simon Lyons ever appeared on the official site, it would have been taken off equally quickly, as his name was never caught in any of the sweeps made of the official site by Help Me Investigate. But he is named on the BBC liveblog as receiving the torch from Tom. And he shares his name at least with Aggreko’s Director of Marketing and Communications.

Also appearing without any nomination story is Simon Thompson, who our source suggests is Aggreko’s legal adviser, and certainly the company does have one listed here. Can anyone help confirm or deny?

Here are the Olympic-related links we’ve been looking at over the last week from June 28th through June 29th:

Why does the north remain so unimpressed by the Olympics? | UK news | guardian.co.uk – Analysing the results of the ComRes polling, it is clear that northern England is simply not engaging with the Olympics. Asked to what extent they were excited about the games, people in the north east mustered 42% of Yes-es, the north west 44% and Yorkshire and the Humber merely 36%. This compared with the 56% who disagreed in the north east, 53% in the north west and 60% in Yorkshire and the Humber. To make things worse, despite coming under budget, across all three northern regions over 60% of respondents felt that the games weren't delivering value for the taxpayer's money. Less than 20% thought that the Olympics would spur them on to engage in sporting activity themselves.

Protecting the Olympic Torch | Anglia – ITV News – The TST travels with the Olympic flame, from the moment it is handed over to LOCOG in Athens until it arrives at the Olympic Stadium for the Opening Ceremony. The same team will then travel with the Paralympic flame.

It is made up of around 70 staff and officers, including 35 ‘runners’ – a number of whom are from the Anglia region. Other members include motorcyclists, senior officers to make command and tactical decisions, communication officers to relay messages to the torch security team and operational planners.

Looking after the torch security is no mean feat, and members of the TST have been through 18 months of gruelling training to prepare for this unusual role.

ORG Zine | The Olympics Organising Committee Run Rings Around Transparency – This lack of transparency was highlighted recently when it emerged that Lia Hervey, Sky Sports News’ Olympics producer, had attempted to seek further information about the breakdown of Olympic tickets to the public by sport and session. Of course, as Locog is not obliged to provide this information due to its status as a private company, it has refused to provide this information, despite concerns that savings from the public sector package appear to be trickling over to Locog. However, whilst it is a private company, Locog has been in receipt of public funding to the tune of £183m.

There are 16 ‘core vehicles’ assigned to accompany the torch for its epic journey – which last night saw the unlikely figure of US rap star Will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas singer and a judge on BBC talent show The Voice, carrying it through Taunton.

But everywhere the procession goes, a small army of support and ancilliary vehicles is also called into service. In Cornwall on Saturday, for example, the convoy was escorted by police motorcyclists bearing the emblems of five separate constabularies. In south Devon, an ambulance, local dignitaries, firearms officers and police ‘safety officers’ on BMW mountain bikes joined the parade.

While LOCOG argues that sponsors are needed to support the Olympic torch relay, and councils struggle to meet the costs of hosting it, there’s a genuine Olympic spirit quietly at work in a series of grassroots alternatives across the country.

From Devon to Moray, alternative relays are involving local communities and raising money for good causes.

Foremost among these is The Real Relay, which sees runners following the official Olympic torch across the British Isles while avoiding the torch’s stops and shortcuts. Organiser Kate Treleaven says they set the relay up in just 5 days:

“We came up with the idea of the Real Relay on Wednesday 23 May, 3 days after seeing the official torch pass through our Devon village. We put the website online on Friday 25 May and we waved our first runner off from Land’s End at midnight on Mon 28 May. We don’t want to knock the official torch relay in any way but we do feel that we’ve proved that LOCOG could and should have organised a continuous running relay for the torch. They had 8 years and seemingly bottomless resources to organise it!”

In Bridlington in Yorkshire, locals were so frustrated by a torchbearer place being given to a Saudi Arabian entrepreneur that they organised their own alternative, with a torch being carried by a disabled long jump star, an athlete, and two members of the town’s fencing club, including still-competing 78-year-old Joy Fleetham.

The relay was then called off after the local council said it could not support it.

Running through all the alternative torch relays is a focus on community and charity. In Bridlington plans were made to collect money for the local RSPCA and the Katie Walker Trust, while The Real Relay has already raised almost £6,000 for charity.

In contrast, guidelines to local authorities from the Olympic organisers specify that the official torch relay cannot be used to raise money for charity.

And while councils have had to spend tens of thousands hosting the official relay – which some companies have paid tens of millions to the Olympic organisers to sponsor – the organisers of these alternative events have had to keep costs low.

“Do we need big sponsors to organise a national torch relay? A resounding NO!” explains The Real Relay’s Kate Treleaven. “We certainly haven’t sought sponsorship, and in fact we feel that it’s the simplicity of the Real Relay that is much of the attraction. I can’t help feeling that the organisation would have been a lot more complicated if we’d have got sponsors involved. It was certainly something that we knew we didn’t want right from the start.”

As for the costs of the relay, the organisers have relied on goodwill and good organisation:

“We had to pay £180 to put the baton in cargo on its first flight from Liverpool to Isle of Man, but since then all the journeys it’s had to make by air and sea have been free as the air and ferry companies have taken the baton as crew hand luggage.

“We have a couple more journeys to make out to the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, and we’re hoping that we will be able to arrange for the baton to travel for free there too.

“Logistically, it’s taken us a lot of time breaking the Olympic Torch route down into stages of about 10-12 miles. The actual route between the communities is up to the runner but we strongly recommend that they avoid major roads.

“There have been areas where it has been more of a struggle to find runners than others. In all honesty we have come quite close to the wire on occasions. i.e. phoning round running clubs trying to get someone to run a stage in 6 hours time! But, as momentum grows and word of the Real Relay grows we’re now finding that we have more than enough eager runners wanting to get involved.”

Distributing Cushions – The History | www.woolsack.org – In the middle of all this we had the request from British Olympic Association (BOA) to make red, white and blue cushions for Team GB athletes at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. Their plans to ship the cushions direct to the Village in Innsbruck were stopped by organisers there so BOA arranged for the young athletes to choose their cushions in the UK. They loved them so much that they let us know they were taking their cushions to Innsbruck and back in their personal luggage and we have had some lovely thank-you letters! It has been frustrating to have one after another agreed plan brought to an end by or through LOCOG, but inspired by the efforts the athletes are making to get selected for the Games, we are looking upon this as just another challenge to be met. Now we know how much the athletes love the cushions and want to have them, we will persevere and find ways meet their requests.

Olympic torch route, day 37: the Games will leave no legacy in Moss Side | Sport | guardian.co.uk – I found it difficult to promote my
programme of workshops in schools because I
was not sanctioned by the council or the
Olympic committee. I was told I could not use
the word Olympic to describe or promote my
song, Olympic Flame, recorded with the Destiny
Africa children choir in Bridlington last autumn.
The proceeds will help make Kampala Children's
Centre self-sufficient by purchasing land for
them to farm.

A games for the people not the sponsors | lives; running – Testament to how London 2012 has purposefully chosen to ignore this counter-model is the Olympic Marathon. Every year the East End successfully hosts a decent chunk of the London Marathon route, but in the single minded desire to showcase the Central London landmarks which are already well-known to the world the route was moved to the centre. For those who would want to watch one of the very few free Olympic events this was also very bad news. Instead of a 26.2 mile route the whole length if the way, a four mile-circuit lapped six times will slash the space for the potential crowd who would have watched in enormous numbers by more than 75%. What might have been one of the most well-supported events of the Games has been reduced by a huge margin and for no reason other than to ensure that corporate control is maintained and the global image of a London Games as represented by Big Ben, the Mall, and Buckingham Palace is maintained.

Screengrab of the cache of the original nomination story for Samsung’s Sven Eric Durr. The story has since disappeared from the London2012 website

Nine Olympic torchbearers nominated by Samsung have been airbrushed from the London2012 website.

The MD for Samsung Mobile UK and Ireland, the Chief Operations Officer at Samsung Africa, and the President and CEO for Samsung in Southeast Asia, Oceania and Taiwan are among seven individuals who are no longer listed on the site. Continue reading →

As part of our process of trying to identify how spaces were allocated by sponsors, we’re looking to list them all. Of those nomination stories made public, we can find 19 who mention the company or have been identified elsewhere – listed below.